IS threat: Still time to build a strategy

American presidents are usually heavily scripted in public and blunt in private.

So, when US President Barack Obama stated flatly “We don’t have a strategy yet for Isis,” it raised eyebrows and more than a few hackles.

Whether or not it was wise to be so candid, his intent was to tamp down the conjecture that the United States was poised to expand military action against Islamic State (IS), often still known by its former name Isis, beyond Iraq into Syria as well.

In the Sotloff tape, the narrator again calls on Obama to “back off and leave our people alone.”

However, as they work to supplant al-Qaeda as the driving force behind the creation of a new caliphate (they are not likely to be any more successful than their rivals were), they seem to relish the re-ignition of the perceived…